Slow PC market hits NVIDIA bad

[Stalk3r*]

The Slow PC market slams NVIDIA, will see 40-50% Q4 revenue drop, talking about how the video card and motherboard manufacturer was hurt by a slow PC marketplace.

NVIDIA posted a warning today that when its fourth quarter results come in, it expects them to show a 40 to 50 percent decline in revenues from the third quarter. The graphics company cited "further weakness in end-user demand and inventory reductions by NVIDIA's channel partners in the global PC supply chain" as the reason for the drop.

40 to 50 percent is a pretty serious drop, especially given that NVIDIA's fourth quarter revenues have always risen from the third quarter, and it shows just how weak the PC market is right now. The discrete graphics market is NVIDIA's bread-and-butter, so the company is quite exposed to drops in the global appetite for PCs and notebooksand demand has definitely dropped. This is why NVIDIA has been trying to push its high-performance computing (HPC) solutions, like Tesla, up-market into supercomputers, and their mobile graphics parts down-market into netbooks via Ion.

Let's hope things will pick up in 2009, for everyone.



Source: Guru3d.com

[5magics]

I'm utterly clueless when it comes to economics but would I be correct in assuming this will cause higher prices to compensate for less units sold? Even so, is it also possible that there will be a (possibly short) period of low prices to boost consumer interest? Anyone clued up in this area?

[J.J.McClure]

To expensive, every year a new graficboard witch is a little bit and i mean a little bit faster then the old one.
Perhaps the consumer can no longer muck.
Hope you understand my english.
It´s translated with google translator.

J.J.

[BeepBeep2]

Originally Posted by 5magics

I'm utterly clueless when it comes to economics but would I be correct in assuming this will cause higher prices to compensate for less units sold? Even so, is it also possible that there will be a (possibly short) period of low prices to boost consumer interest? Anyone clued up in this area?

No, they will lower until they just get enough profit and they sell more. Then prices go up.

[Husky42]

Maybe Nvidia needs to give a better offering to its consumers. 8800 GT to a GTX 260 was not really a huge step up and if I'm going to spend the type of money i do on components I want a little more bang for my buck.

[brabham67]

Yup, Supply vs. Demand. This could bode well for those well heeled buyers looking into nVidia's latest offerings.

EDIT:

Husky hit the nail on the head. Nvidia probably hurt itself by releasing a string of cards into the wild that caused lots of confusion. I have an Factory OC'd 8800GT and I would bet it would go toe to toe with a stock 9800GT. It certainly didn't help that ATI had a Q4 resurgence with the 4800 series cards that out performed Nvidias offerings at a lower price.

[BeepBeep2]

Nvidia in the graphics world is falling into the same position as AMD was in the CPU world.

Came up with something amazing, then sat and waited too long to make it better.
Now they are just using more and more of the same crap and half their line doesnt even fit in normal peoples cases.

And ATi dominates.

[Husky42]

Originally Posted by BeepBeep2

Nvidia in the graphics world is falling into the same position as AMD was in the CPU world.

Came up with something amazing, then sat and waited too long to make it better.
Now they are just using more and more of the same crap and half their line doesnt even fit in normal peoples cases.

And ATi dominates.

That last sentence is subjective. ATI is losing money also.

Nvidia offerings all perform well if not better then the ATI lineup. To say they dominate is like saying lemon is better then lime. All a matter of preference when the numbers are so close.

(i prefer lime)

[BeepBeep2]

I never said Ati isnt losing also.

[ravenmorpheus2k]

Personally I'd go for nVidia everytime. Games have the "how it's meant to be played" logo on them for a reason - because the developers use nVidia cards for the most part (well as I understand it they do).

I agree with J.J.Mclures point though, it is too expensive for very little performance gain to upgrade year on year but when games no longer support older cards (MoH Airborne for example doesn't support certain older cards and won't even install) you have little choice but to upgrade in some cases.

Frankly it's about time the cost of PC gaming in terms of hardware came down, a lot, especially where laptops are concerned (seeing as I game on my Asus M70VM and I spent £1000 on it and it's not even classed as a gaming computer and won't be playing new games at any decent graphical level this time next year or even in six months!).

[SgtH3nry3]

ATi Technologies has a huge benefit in the fact that in the near future it will have it's own AMD fabs instead of being a fabless semiconductor company.

At that point, they are in the position to equalize and maybe dominate the marketshares in comparison to nVidia.
Also Intel is making a move to the graphics cards industry. And VIA is entering the GPGPU world. Intel, AMD, Via, Khronos and Microsoft are working closely together while nVidia is touting out proprietary material that nobody wants.

nVidia is desperately trying to keep up with those three companies (Intel, AMD-ATi and VIA) by expanding it's productlines with material they have never worked with before.
They depend on the annexation of market leading companies, of which the numbers are decreasing rapidly.
Or in other terms, their strategy isn't going to work in the longterm unless something will change drastically.

[Hansaplast]

Their problem:
95% of all games run smooth on their years old GTX 8800,
so this people dont buy a new one until they needed.

Where is the M$ Train Simulator with 8 Million Poly trains
and the raytracing light sim ?

[BeepBeep2]

Originally Posted by ravenmorpheus2k

Personally I'd go for nVidia everytime. Games have the "how it's meant to be played" logo on them for a reason - because the developers use nVidia cards for the most part (well as I understand it they do).

That must be why ATI's 3D images are better!

I can turn antialiasing completely off and my 8800 GTS couldnt match the image quality @ 8xAA.

[BeepBeep2]

Originally Posted by SgtH3nry3

ATi Technologies has a huge benefit in the fact that in the near future it will have it's own AMD fabs instead of being a fabless semiconductor company.
...
And VIA is entering the GPGPU world.

AMD sold it's fab's to an investor who started Arab Micro Devices. (Owns AMD's fabs)

Did you forget S3 graphics? Nice cards for HTPCs.

I have an Factory OC'd 8800GT and I would bet it would go toe to toe with a stock 9800GT.

The 9800GT is only a renamed 8800GT with nothing but power throttling added, so the stock 8800GT performs the same as a 9800GT.

[SgtH3nry3]

Originally Posted by BeepBeep2

AMD sold it's fab's to an investor who started Arab Micro Devices. (Owns AMD's fabs)

Damn. Well I assume they know what they are doing.

Originally Posted by BeepBeep2

Did you forget S3 graphics? Nice cards for HTPCs.

Yeah, but S3 is owned by VIA if I'm not mistaken?

[BeepBeep2]

Yeah, but VIA/S3 have been around since the 3dfx days...